


The Shoe Tree, the Hell Week, the Light Rail, and Other Things

by bestliars



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Minnesota, University of Minnesota
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 17:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7324060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bestliars/pseuds/bestliars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story about Kyle’s senior year at the University of Minnesota, and a bit about what came after. I’m going to do my best to do it justice and explain what happened, but there are some pieces that are always going to be missing because I wasn’t there. One thing we can all agree on, one thing I know for sure, is that it was important that I wasn’t there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shoe Tree, the Hell Week, the Light Rail, and Other Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohtempora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohtempora/gifts).



This is a story about Kyle’s senior year at the University of Minnesota, and a bit about what came after. I’m going to do my best to do it justice and explain what happened, but I might get some things wrong. He told me most of what happened, and so did some other people, but there are some pieces that are always going to be missing because I wasn’t there. One thing we can all agree on, one thing I know for sure, is that it was important that I wasn’t there.

Kyle’s senior year was the year that the Green Line train was finally finished. Construction on this thing started before either of us were at the U, and it seemed like it could go on forever. It wasn’t just campus that was torn up, but all over, a line cut through the Cities, causing short-term chaos to create convenience later on.

The new train line was going to go right through campus, on both sides of the river, so the construction messed with a lot of things. Even the parts of that weren’t going to have a train through it were still affected, since buses got rerouted and traffic patterns changed. Washington used to be a normal street, where you could drive across the river and pull up in front of Coffman and let someone out of the car. The congestion must have been terrible. It’s probably better this way with just buses and stuff allowed up there. 

I only sometimes had a car on campus, and let me tell you, it isn’t the greatest place to drive. There’s a lot of one way streets that seem like they’re going nowhere, and nowhere to park if you don’t want to pay to be in a lot. And then in the winter everything gets worse.

There’s this old joke, that there are two seasons in Minnesota: winter and road construction. The Green Line train was four years of road construction, only stopping when the snow and cold made doing anything impossible. They were already in the thick of it when I was a freshman, and it never stopped. My whole university experience was spent navigating around torn up streets.

My favorite part might have been when the bridge was all torn up so you could see right through it. It was down to two lanes, and if you were on the bus you could look over and know there wasn’t anything, or like, there wasn’t enough, just the support beams with nothing hanging off them, and then the river. You could see right through to the water where there was supposed to be road.

They kept on blocking off half of the pedestrian bridge on top too, which was kind of scary. Half the bridge wasn’t safe to walk over, but the other half was totally fine? That didn’t make much sense. I mean, it wasn’t really safe to walk on at all, since only having one side open made bikers even more dangerous to pedestrians. It was always a little bit dangerous. It was always taking a risk walking across the Washington Avenue bridge. 

Kyle crossed the Washington Avenue Bridge a lot, probably twice a day, four times a week. He was a business major, but like, a _business_ business major, not like me. His business major was through Carlson School of Management, which is on the West Bank, so he always had classes over there, and we always lived on the East Bank, so he was back and forth all the time. 

There’s a great view on the bridge. In one direction there’s downtown, the other it’s just trees and stuff. There’s a big field on the West Bank side that used to be a park or something, but they had pieces of the 35W Bridge all spread out while they tried to figure out what happened to it. You can see it just past the shoe tree.

I guess I probably have to try to explain the shoe tree, not just assume that you know what I’m talking about.

It’s this tree, and it’s full of shoes people have thrown on it. It’s been like that forever, long enough that my uncle remembers it from when he was in school. He asked me if it was still there, and I said, “Yep, it sure is.” He shook his head and smiled.

I asked him if he knew _why_ people started throwing their shoes in this tree—or well, it’s a couple of trees growing close together, their branches overlapping, and it’s called the shoe tree, not the shoe trees, but the details aren’t important. He said he didn’t know, that it started before his time. Why people started throwing shoes in this tree is one of the great mysteries of our time.

There are a couple of popular theories. One is that you throw your shoes in the tree when you graduate, which makes a fair amount of sense. You’re moving on to another life where you won’t need your ratty sneakers anymore. You’re going off to be a real adult, and leaving a piece of yourself behind. 

Some people say you don’t have to graduate, just accomplish something really big. You could your shoes in a tree after giving a presentation, or finishing a thesis, or winning a championship. Anything huge like that, the kind of thing where you might divide your life as being before or after this thing.

Another theory is that people throw their shoes in the tree after they lose their virginity.

You know, I thought about it? After the first time Kyle and I really… well, went _all the way_ , for lack of a better phrase. The next day I walked across the bridge cause I had a lecture in Wiley, and I saw all those shoes, and I remembered the story, and thought, ‘I could do that,’ but then I didn’t, cause I needed my shoes. I had some gym shoes that were falling apart that I hadn’t said goodbye to yet, but they were in my closet up in Blaine, and I wasn’t going to bring them to campus just to throw them in a tree. I’m not that dedicated to this tradition. I didn’t need to leave a piece of myself in that tree.

I always liked looking at it though. It’s one of the more interesting things on campus, something weird and unique. If I was giving someone a guided tour of the U I’d want to point out that shoe tree as we walked past. 

I walked over that bridge a lot, but sometimes I’d take the bus too. A lot of buses go across the bridge, but most of the time I’d take the Connector. The Campus Connector used to go across the Tenth Avenue Bridge as well. It would go through the East Bank, across the Washington Avenue Bridge, through the West Bank, over the Tenth Avenue Bridge, then back on the East Bank, along University, through stadium Village, then out to Saint Paul, then circle round back to where it started. Now it’s more like a line. It drops people off in across the street from Coffman, then goes across the Washington Avenue Bridge drops people off and turns around, back across the bridge to pick people up in front of Coffman. It’s more of a line than a circle. I don’t like it as much. I’m sure it’s more efficient, and it still gets people where they need to go, but I don’t like it. The old way circled the whole campus in this figure eight maneuver. That was really sort of cool.

Going in a big loop like that had always been a rerouting, not the way they wanted things to be. I wonder if they’d already had to change it to go like that when the 35W Bridge collapsed. Interstate 35 runs right next to Tenth, and right after 35 fell they had to close the Tenth Avenue Bridge for a while. That must have been a real mess. Though at least it happened in the summer, so there wouldn’t have been so many people depending on that bus to take them where they needed to go.

I think I was fifteen when the 35W Bridge collapsed. I remember my mom kept on talking to different people on the phone, everyone wanted to know that we were alright. One of her friends from school moved out East, but she saw it on the news, and called my mom to talk about it. And I had to listen to them talk because I didn’t want to leave the room, I needed to keep watching it on TV. I can’t remember, was that just a local broadcast? I know there was stuff to watch on TV, but I can’t remember what the coverage was like at all, just that we couldn’t turn it off, and I couldn’t leave the room. 

You know, Kyle and I have talked about a lot of things over the years, but I don’t think I ever asked him where he was when the 35W bridge collapsed. I’m sure he remembers, it’s one of those things you remember. We weren’t very good friends back then, just people who sorta knew each other. Taking 35 isn’t usually the best way to get from my house to his house cause it goes through downtown, and there’s always traffic, so the fact that the bridge was closed never got in the way of our visits. But if you’re going down to Eden Prairie from campus you want to take 35. I know the new bridge was open by the time I started school, but I can’t remember how long it was gone. I wonder if Kyle had to take one of the other bridges if he came to see Leddy play or something. Campus is the first exit on this side of the river. You’re barely across the Mississippi, then getting off the highway onto Fourth. 

Sorry, I didn't mean to give driving directions, I just got distracted. You don’t need to remember that, it doesn’t have anything to do with the story I was going to tell you. I was trying to set the scene. It just seemed interesting, but Kyle’s told me I’m too willing talk about the traffic. The story I was going to tell you starts on the opposite end of campus, on the West Bank, in Hanson Hall.

Hanson is where the Carlson advising office is, and that’s where we’re going to start this story. It was Kyle’s senior year, so he had to go see his advisor at make sure he had all his ducks in a row to graduate. It was tricky business, and this was the last of four years balancing required classes and hockey schedules. Kyle has never been a fan of the advising office. It’s on the second floor, by the Starbucks. Whenever he had to go in there and talk to somebody about the future he would reward himself with coffee, which I’ve always thought was cute.

Kyle didn’t like talking to the advisor, but he _really_ didn’t like waiting to talk to the advisor. He swears, Hanson Hall is his least favorite building on campus, which I don’t think is really fair. It’s a nice new building, and always very clean. He shouldn’t be down on the building itself when really it’s the decorating he has a problem with.

The main room of Hansen, the atrium or whatever, I don’t know what they call it, has this giant poster of Kyle and Condon. They’re standing there, looking very neat in their jerseys and button down shirts, smiling examples of Carlson students exhibiting leadership. Awkwardly smiling in Kyle’s case, but I still think he looks nice. Kyle doesn’t agree. Kyle is not a fan of this poster.

I get that it’s kind of a lot. It’s a huge thing, larger than lifesize, probably as tall as I am, hanging in the middle of everything. Kyle worries a lot about what’s expected of him, and having that banner there as a reminder while he was trying to talk to his advisor can’t have helped.

When I was in high school the guidance counselor had these U of M posters claiming that “Even Mother Nature Loves Maroon and Gold.” There was one of a sunset, and another was a field of wheat. I know that’s kind of tacky, but I liked it. Whenever I was in her office it was to figure out how to graduate early and get here a year early. I was so excited about the U, and there was something encouraging about seeing that nature was just as excited as I was. Those posters were supposed to be inspiring, and I guess they worked, at least on me.

I remember texting with Kyle while he was waiting to see his advisor. He was not excited about it at all, to say the least. I wanted to distract him, but wasn’t sure what to say. I got a sense that he didn’t want to be thinking about the future, so talking about my life in Florida didn’t seem helpful. I guess I could have brought up something from high school, or when I was at the U too, but bringing that up would have made me miss him more.

I asked him what he was going to eat for lunch and he snapped at me.

(Sure you can snap at someone in text. It’s subtle, and you have to be good at reading between the lines, but this is Kyle we’re talking about. If I wasn’t good at understanding his pauses we never would have gotten anywhere.)

Maybe lunch was just too far in the future. Some days are like that, where even looking ahead a couple of hours can seem overwhelming. Looking back, he was probably a lot more stressed out about talking to the Carlson advisor about graduation stuff than I thought. Kyle’s baseline of intense concern about the world is a lot higher than mine, which means I can have a hard time noticing if it’s elevated if I’m not actually there. 

There was a long pause, where he was talking with the advisor. I left my phone on the kitchen table, and when I got back there were five new texts complaining about the whole experience of having to go to the advisor, trekking out to Hansen, having to wait, everything. He didn’t say anything about having to confront the reality that he would be done with school in the spring and on to the next big thing, but I know that was on his mind.

Then we did start texting about what he was going to get for lunch. If you’re on the West Bank and you don’t want to walk off campus the Carlson food court is the best option. The Carlson food court is by far the best food-court-like thing on campus. This was even more true when I started at the U, but they kept on doing things to make it worse, narrowing the gap. But between Coffman, the stuff in Blegen, and the St. Paul Student Center, the Carlson food court wins hands down. Even with that settled there’s the question of what he should get. There are a lot of different options which is part of what makes it the best food court.

There’s a cafe that’s a part of the food court that makes these sandwiches I really like. Or at least they used to. A lot of stuff changed, and I can’t remember if that was one of the things that was different. I can’t remember what Kyle wound up ordering. I guess it doesn’t matter, but I’d tell you if I did.

We texted all the time that year. And we talked on the phone every week, sometimes more often if there was something really worth talking about. If there wasn’t anything worth talking about we’d find something to chat about anyway.

One week we spent twenty minutes on the phone while Kyle walked through the new Target Express in Dinkytown. Neither of us really knew what to expect from a Target Express, but by the time Kyle was hanging up on me to check out, I was so jealous that it didn’t exist while I was in school. It would have been so useful. It would have saved me from the three times a year I needed to go to Target with my mom or take the bus down University to go to the Super Target in Saint Paul. (Though I guess if I was still on campus I could take the Green Line down University instead of the bus, which would have been more convenient.)

The way Kyle described the new Target Express was amazing. It had a big grocery section, and lots of technology, and nice stuff. There are so many drugstores on campus, but like, Target is a different level. It’s a nicer shopping experience. There are things you can buy at the drugstore, and they’re fine, but from Target they’re _better_ somehow. I don’t understand it, but I appreciate it, and think it’s cool that there’s one on campus now.

It’s only a Target Express so they don’t have everything, but like, how often do you buy furniture from Target? And apparently the clothes section is much smaller, but the way Kyle described it they had all the essentials, and really, what else does anyone need? (I am aware that I am not a very good judge of whether somewhere is a good place to buy clothes or not.) Talking to Kyle on the phone while he shopped was fun. I helped him pick out what kind of dish soap to get. We used to make that sort of decision together regularly, and I think my input was appreciated. I hope he thought of me every time he did dishes until that bottle of soap was over.

I’ve still never been to the Target Express. It probably isn’t as impressive as I’m imagining it to be, but that’s alright. There have been times in the summer where I needed to pick something up and I could have gone there, but I like keeping the image in my head pristine, and the CVS in Dinkytown is pretty good too. 

The first time I bought condoms and lube was at the CVS in Dinkytown, on the corner of 4th and Pleasant. I remember went out of my way to that CVS instead of the Walgreens in Stadium Village because the CVS had self checkouts. It was worth it to go out of my way to not talk to anyone or make eye contact.

I could have gone to Boyton and they would have given me condoms and lube for free, that’s what the student health center is for, but there would have been this whole social interaction, and I would have turned pink. Providing condoms and lube is what they’re there to do, it isn’t like they would have been judging me, but it still seemed better to skip that whole scene and spend my own money at the self checkout. 

I just forgot one important thing: the self checkout at CVS never fucking works.

That was a bad ten minutes, but I survived, and it was definitely worth the embarrassment. That is one story I’m definitely not telling. I shouldn’t keep on getting distracted like this.

The story I really wanted to tell you about is about the first week of the spring semester of Kyle’s senior year. Kyle was back on campus way before classes started. School might be out for a month, but hockey doesn’t stop. The Gophers had their first game of 2015 on January 2nd.

On the Friday and Saturday before school started they played two games against Wisconsin. The first game was a 2-2 tied, but they won the second. Beating Wisconsin always feels good. There’s some good fishing over there, and I respect their cheese thing, but fuck the Badgers. 

Kyle didn’t have any points in either game, and he felt shitty about that. I remember talking to him on Sunday afternoon. It’s earlier in Minnesota, and Kyle had gotten dragged out for a while after the game, and he was still sleepy eyed and half-caffeinated on facetime.

I watched the first game on TV, and thought he played fine. I don’t think I told him that, cause he wouldn’t have listened to me anyway. I tried to cheer him up by reminding him that Wisconsin didn’t win at all. The first game might have been a tie, but they won one, and Wisconsin didn’t. I knew it didn’t work very well, but by the time the call was over he was almost smiling at me. 

School started Tuesday. Kyle had a relatively light course load. He knew he’d probably, hopefully, be leaving before the end of the semester. All the classes were carefully chosen to be flexible and accommodate him taking off. It should have been fine. Instead it was the start of what would eventually be known as Hell Week.

The crowning jewel of Hell Week was the North Star Challenge Cup, which is a tournament between the different Minnesotan college teams. The games get played at the X, and bragging rights are important here. The in-state rivalries can get intense. You always want to win these games because they’re against guys you’ve been playing agaisnt for as long as you can remember, guys who are friends in the summer. It’s a moderately big deal. It’s something to get excited about.

The Gophers should do pretty good in these games. We’re the only permanent participants, the other four teams rotate. All the other schools have qualifiers in their names. We’re just the U. Just Minnesota. The main campus if you have to clarify. Clearly superior. Except that we have a really terrible track record in this tournament. It’s only a couple years old, but it doesn’t look good.

I only played in this thing once, the first year it happened, and we won that year. We aren’t cursed or anything. We did finish in last place the next two times, but it’s only two games. Small sample size. Everyone really wanted to win this year. I was excited for them. Kyle sounded excited for them. We talked on Thursday after his last class.

He was complaining about this class, some elective, I can’t remember what it was, he wound up dropping it a week later. It wasn’t anything he was excited about, just something to fill his schedule out, make him appear like a well rounded human being or something. I don’t know what the advisor said to get him to give it a try, but they must have been persuasive, I remember it didn’t sound like his sort of thing.

And this professor assigned homework on the first week of class. Not just reading or a response, but something decently involved, something Kyle was not excited about at all. Professors who give homework in the first week of class are basically evil. I don’t like believing in evil, I like to see the best in humanity, but giving out writing assignments on the first week of class is both cruel and unusual. Kyle had better things to do with his weekend than do homework for a class he didn’t give a damn about.

The first game of the tournament was on Friday night. They lost to Mankato, 4-2. Not fun. Saturday they lost to Duluth. Kyle had a goal in that game, the only goal in a 2-1 loss. They finished last in the tournament for the second year in a row. The tone of the texts I was getting from Minnesota were uniformly downtrodden.

At least they were sad for as long as they were coherent. I went to bed early, a time zone ahead, but there were a lot of messages waiting for me when I woke up.

There was a text from Reilly — Mikey, I guess I’ve got to be specific here, there are more than enough of them. There was a text from Mikey Reilly, like, and I’m paraphrasing cause I’m not scrolling back the January before last, but I remember it pretty well. It said, “with Hell Week being over it’s a gd shame yr not here coz Kyle deserves to make out with someone, and that’s not happening w you in [palm tree emoji].”

I’m friends with a lot of interesting texters. Sometimes it can get confusing, but that might just be Huby. The way he does punctuation gets interesting sometimes. I’ve actually started to appreciate it. He does it with purpose, it’s a French thing. Lots of the confusing punctuation that shows up in my texts is just because people are drunk, which I understand, but that’s a lot harder to figure out. Sometimes using an emoji instead of a real word takes some thinking, but I’m familiar with how the palm tree is used. I never know what Sasha means with the robot face. And I don’t think I fully grasp the nuances of all the different cat faces.

The other thing Mikey texted me was, “Your boy actually admits to missing u when he’s drunk. It’s weird.” That one I’m pretty sure I remember word for word. That one stuck.

There were other things too from other guys, all about having survived Hell Week, and how now they were through the other side and going to have a good time. Mikey’s text just stood out cause of the palm tree emoji and the way it hurt.

I didn’t want to hear about how Kyle missed me. I was very busy trying not to miss him. Instead of letting myself get pulled into that trap I decided to find out what Hell Week was.

Hell Week — what a name. It’s evocative. I don’t know who came up with it, certainly not Kyle, that isn’t his style. His thing is to suffer and not comment on it. I can’t throw stones, I do that too, but Kyle’s a champion. It’s a Minnesotan thing, stoic Scandinavian suffering. So for the last seven days to get called Hell Week meant they were remarkably bad.

It wasn’t just Kyle’s annoying class, it wasn’t just losing to other Minnesota teams. A lot of people had shit going on and they collectively decided to call it Hell Week. There was a breakup, a fender bender, and a small kitchen fire. And I wasn’t there for it.

There wasn’t anything I could do to make it better. Not really. Being supportive from a distance is fine and all, but it doesn’t feel like much of a contribution. If I had been there I could have _done_ something, or at least I could have tried, instead of letting Hell Week unfold unabated, unaware. 

But I said this was going to be a story about Kyle’s senior year, not about me. Hell Week is the story, not how I felt later on. But even the week itself doesn’t seem too interesting. When it happened I don’t think it was as important as I’m making it sound.

Now that I've explained it to you it seems so small. It doesn't seem worth going on and on about. I think the thing is that I wasn't there. If I had been there, if I had lived through that Hell Week right next to Kyle then it wouldn't seem so important. It would be something from our shared past that we got through and don't have to talk about anymore.

But I wasn't there. I didn't even hear about it until it was all over and there was nothing I could do about. Being that helpless and that cut off made me feel shitty. And I felt bad about that too, cause sure, maybe my feelings were hurt being left out, but I had it better than he did. I didn't have anything real to complain about. 

I had my own things going on. Kyle and I texted all the time, we called every week, we skyped sometimes, I kept track of how the team was doing. We were both trying to stay in touch. We had both decided staying in touch mattered. It’s just that we were both busy and far enough away that things could still slip through the cracks.

The next part of the story comes after another bad loss, when the Gophers season ended. Kyle and I didn’t talk right after. Too raw. I wasn’t there, he didn’t want to hear what I had to say. Or maybe he did, but he didn’t call me. 

We didn’t talk until he got back to Minnesota. He called me on the phone after he officially signed with the Panthers. We were on the same team again. Well, kind of. I was injured and he was headed for San Antonio, but it still meant something.

Kyle was kind of freaking out about it, which made sense. This was huge. This was leaving school behind to be a professional, the next step to have the career he wanted. This was leaving home for a strange city, leaving friends for strange teammates, leaving comfort for the great unknown. It’s terrifying.

I did it a couple years before, and it was incredible, but also terrifying. It wasn’t exactly the same; I went straight to the Panthers, no time in the minors, but still. It’s a huge and sudden change.

When I left school I had Kyle there to talk me through it. It was still rushed and terrifying and exhilarating, but I wasn’t alone. I had someone to lean on. That spring, after the lockout ended, and my leaving for Florida started to seem more and more realistic, we had a lot of sleepy late night conversations about the future, about what would happen after our season ended, and after that, years down the line. We started talking about commitment, not making promises, but making sure we were on the same page for where we wanted to end up.

I wanted to be there for Kyle while he was going through this thing. I always want to be there for Kyle. So when he finally did call me after his last college season was over I was going to do my best to make him feel better. Before I go on and tell about what happened in this conversation I want to remind you that I had back surgery right before this, and was still pretty stoned. I know I said some pretty weird things, but there was a reason. Maybe I didn’t make a ton of sense, but the sentiment was true.

We tried to figure out what Kyle going to San Antonio actually meant, talk through it. 

“Maybe you need to commemorate the occasion?” was my suggestion.

“Like what?” Kyle asked.

“I don’t know, get a tattoo?” And then I laughed at the idea of Kyle getting a tattoo, and Kyle sighed at me over the phone. I knew just what his face looked like right then, and wished it was close to mine.

“You’re _leaving._ You should do something huge.” I don’t know why, but Kyle leaving seemed like a way bigger deal than when I left. When I left he was still there, our friends were still there. I wasn’t, but the world I cared about was still going on. With both of us out of school that’s over. It’s all gone. There’s no going back. “You should do something huge. Leave your mark on the place.”

“Well, if we had ever won a championship…”

We let that hang between us. I didn’t know if that “we” meant the Gophers, or the two of us, but either way. It made me wish we were the sort of people who used pet names. I wanted to say, “I love you,” but we save that for special occasions. Positive special occasions, not trying to smooth over old hurts.

I decided to change the subject. “Maybe you could graffiti something.” That made Kyle laugh too. That was even more ridiculous than the idea of him getting a tattoo.

“All of your ideas are _terrible_ ,” he told me.

Kyle was right. All of my ideas were _so bad_. I wanted to do better than that for him. “What about the shoe tree? Isn’t that the thing it’s for? Throw your shoes up there then leave?”

“I don’t actually graduate until May. I still have papers and shit.”

“Whatever, you’re going now. It’s close enough.” I said, “We could take one of your shoes, and one of my shoes, and tie them together like they’re married, and throw them on the tree.” I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea. I don’t know why tying two shoes together made them married. I just knew that Kyle should do something to recognize what a big next step his life was taking.

Maybe that’s why the shoe tree is a thing — because if you’re taking a big next step you probably want to do it in new shoes. That almost makes some sort of sense.

Kyle didn’t agree to throwing anything in the shoe tree, but he did listen to me talk on the phone until I was most of the way asleep. It was really good of him. I wasn’t making much sense, and I’m sure he had better things to do.

I guess none of this is much of a story. It doesn't sound very dramatic the way I'm telling it. I guess I'm not much of a story teller. 

I think the problem is that I've tried to focus on the least exciting way of looking at it. I wanted to feel like Kyle leaving the U to go play in San Antonio wasn’t scary. If I believed that then I wouldn't worry as much, and then maybe Kyle wouldn't worry as much either, and everything would turn out fine, and all the worry we hadn't been able to avoid would seem silly. 

Or like, not silly, you shouldn’t feel bad about not being ready for change, but unimportant? Not unwarranted, but not worth holding on to. I wanted everything to turn out alright. It did. More or less.

I mean, a lot of that spring sucked for me. We missed the playoffs, and I had back surgery, but Kyle did alright in San Antonio. He scored some goals, and I was really proud of him. The future came and the world didn’t end.

He got back in town, and I started feeling better. We had a place together, not too far from campus. We didn’t need long phone calls. Our text were about things like remembering to pick up milk. We ran errands together. We wound up at the Target in the quarry, standing next to each other in an aisle trying to decide what kind of laundry detergent to buy. It was easy in a way I was going to miss in the fall.

With Minnesotan summers and Florida rest of the year it’s like my whole life is perfect weather. I don’t know what I did to deserve it. I took the Green Line train for the first time. A bunch of us went to a baseball game. The Twins lost, but the weather was nice. I really like Target Field. Wherever you sit there’s a good view of the City, which helps when the baseball isn’t very good. It’s so open, the exact opposite of the Metrodome. The Dome was a claustrophobic cement block with an improbable ceiling. Its time was over, but I was still sad to see it go down.

The first time I ever took the light rail was to the Metrodome. That was back when it was the Hiawatha Line, before a second train came around necessitating the color coding of Blue and Green. It was another baseball game. I can’t remember if the Twins lost, it was a long time ago. I guess I’m not really a train taker. I’m not a commuter, I don’t like going to the mall. I’m the sort of guy who’ll take the train once a year to save myself from parking at a baseball game. 

They’ve got plans for the light rail to go all the way out to Eden Prairie. The last time I saw anything about it nobody could agree where the money was going to come from, so who knows if it’s ever going to happen. Someday, probably, but no time soon, and it’s already too late for it to be useful for us. It would have been so slick, if the Green Line was running through campus, and then this other thing — the Red Line or whatever — kept going all the way to Eden Prairie, real close to Kyle’s folks. It would have been so convenient. But he’s all graduated now, so it doesn’t matter.


End file.
